


Ghost Story

by octobertown



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Faked Death, Fix-It, Haunting, Post-War, reylo au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23876827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octobertown/pseuds/octobertown
Summary: In the wake of tragedy, a haunting: but there’s no such thing as ghosts. (A real world post-TROS AU.)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15
Collections: 9 Squares Reylo Challenge, ReylOlds





	Ghost Story

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Reylo 9Square challenge on the ReylOlds discord. There's nothing supernatural in here, though I did my best to imagine a real-world parallel ending for TROS where Ben sacrifices himself for Rey, and disappears -- but perhaps not into the aether. 
> 
> I was given the 9Square terms, "silver, found, winter, ice cream, sleep, sacrifice, neutral, modest, and Author's Choice". I selected "cemetery". The setting as I see it in my mind is Highgate West in winter. There's definitely a nod to Tennyson's "In memoriam" in here too.

Winter arrived in late November, occluding her too-humid windows with frost and throwing a shroud over streets and lawns -- freezing just enough to halt whatever grief she might've expressed before she needed to give voice to the excuses Finn and Poe wanted to hear. They'd asked of course: why go back again?  
  
She kept her expression carefully neutral, a demure smile not quite reaching her eyes though her fingers fluttered at her collar with restless effort of keeping her secrets tucked in close. She smoothed any concern -- thinking ofLeia, of Han -- their faces at the forefront of her mind as she looked her friends dead in the eye, hugged them both and told Finn she'd return by dinner.  
  
Other explanations defied reason.  
  
The freezer door open-and-shut again, Rey puffing a cloud in the morning light of their shared apartment -- so much like army barracks after a war had been won -- the remains of revels clinging in the corners and between the sofa cushions like the day after New Year's Eve. Smile wilting, she escaped into the cold with Finn's questions trailing. Fingers chilled through. Heart pounding. Pushing the carton into her purse as if it was a talisman.  
  


* * *

  
  
The snow did nothing to soften the sound of her footsteps down the narrow forest path, the trees bedecked in silver from the frost. Those skeletal fingers crackled as they waved, Rey's journey from the car park into the descending quiet of the cemetery unremarked by whatever watched in the trees:  
  
Statues. Specters cast in white -- their faces peering out at her from the gloom of yew and hornbeam where they watched over their owner's eternal slumber.  
  
Gravemarkers frosted with snow stuck out at odd angles, the oldest burials worn from time and forgetting, and those who might remember loved ones buried at Junari Point.  
  
It was pretty, for a cemetery.  
  
But it was bloody cold.  
  


* * *

  
  
The path to the mausoleum was lost to the snow, the caretaker unrepentant someplace else, likely cozied by a fireplace somewhere with a hot cup of something. Alone again, she descended following whatever hope remained, muted by the quiet by not entirely lost -- not yet. Pain forged purpose and time sharpened it into something that defied whatever stars contrived to cross. It cut as sharply against her teeth. It left her with an ache in her face from smiling too hard for too long; keeping up her spirits while her patience melted into worry, and then darker musings that whispered that she would always be alone -- that she might keep a new tally of days scratched into her bedroom wall, perhaps: a calendar of missed days that might've led to light and happiness and fulfillment under different circumstances not necessitated by such well-intended sacrifices.  
  
He gave too much, in the end: only all of him. When Rey closed her eyes, she could still see the rain-painted streets under red lights; hear the sirens in the distance. The weight of his body before it lightened; before he slipped through her fingers.  
  
And she kept his secret: telling her friends nothing of the loss, because what could she say to mourn an enemy so that they might understand how deeply it hurt?  
  


* * *

  
  
Her wool coat was far too austere a choice for these pilgrimages, but some part of her wanted presentation to outweigh the practicality of a puffer vest and a floppy hat. It didn't seem right, no matter how maudlin the sentiment seemed: Rey wanted to look nice for these visits. Just in case.  
  
In autumn, marble and granite cut an imposing line for the family mausoleum, but winter softened the severity of the quiet. She approached, finding the willow draped gray and white against the forest. There were no other footprints in the ankle-deep blanket of white. Just hers, and only when she turned back to see how far she'd come yet again, all efforts to find him as arduous as a journey through the snow drifts in cotton tights and a skirt.  
  
She extracted the pint of mint chip from her purse, stolen from beneath Finn's nose from their freezer. Set it on a low bench opposite the tomb with a little plastic spoon resting across the lid. A ridiculous ritual, meant to summon the dead.  
  


* * *

  
  
Deed done, she approached, greeting the names craved into the slab: Solo and Organa and Solo, her facade wilting a little at that. Not "Kylo Ren", because Kylo Ren was dead.  
  
Rey exhaled, her breath painting ghostly clouds against the freshly carved names.  
  
His name trembled against the back of her teeth, but she smiled, tracing the characters with bare fingers that couldn't feel the emptiness behind the marble.  
  
"Wish you were here," she managed, knocking twice as if it were part of some ritual that only she knew, casting about for something else to say to conjure him. Wherever he was now.  
  
Finding nothing, she stepped back, prepared to resume her watch -- to sit for a spell in the hopes that something had somehow changed between the last time and the present; that something might defy space and time; might make the waiting more bearable.  
  
Rey worried her lip, biting down to divert the sting from her eyes to anyplace else. Tucked her hands into the crooks of her elbows, and hunched against the cold to better remember the silence of his absence, the consequence of choices made to spare her from the unrelenting tide of darkness that followed someone capable of his crimes.  
  
Still, he haunted her, time folding into a kiss they might not've shared under other circumstances.  
  
When she closed her eyes, Rey could still see him disappearing into the night, hastening into places where she could not follow, the sirens closing in. Her friends wouldn't understand, just like they wouldn't understand why she knew he'd be back someday -- like he was just out of sight, but nearby. Watching her. Waiting in some unseen place though they remained tethered together despite the distance between them. Like they wouldn't understand how Rey would never be whole without him.  
  


* * *

  
  
Claiming her vigil, she pried open the lid, snow melting into the backs of her modest skirt and wetting her tights. Left her cold. She barely felt it.  
  
Rey waited, slipping into a meditative quiet. Listening for a change on the wind, perhaps. A sign from that unseen force that things might be different today. Prying off the lid, she stared at how unchanging the block of flecked green cream was --  
  
She didn't turn at the crunch of snow, though the hair rose on the back of her neck with some secondary awareness: a lover's glance lighting fire across the skin. She shivered, confused a moment at the subtle shift in the surrounding air.  
  
Heart quickening, she swallowed the lurch of fear at the possibility that she was somehow wrong, and yet -- she just _knew_.  
  
"Mint chip," he mused.  
  
The first spoonful shuddered on the way to her mouth, and she swallowed, not even tasting it.  
  
The gravel of his voice rumbled with amusement, lighter, perhaps, so divested of those trappings he knew in his time before -- his time spent as someone else:  
  
"Why ice cream? It's freezing out here."  
  
Rey licked her lips, her gaze swimming on her knees.  
  
"It doesn't melt," she declared.  
  
She sniffed.  
  
Ice cream in winter endured.  
  
When empires fell; when kings were cast from their thrones --  
  
"It's a little like having a good cry in the rain." She choked a laugh that lacked all humor.  
  
A beat, but he huffed a small, confused laugh that spun through her like a good, strong sip of whiskey. She curled her toes in her boots.  
  
"That doesn't make any sense, Rey."  
  
Her chest tightened, the unwillingness to cry outright staunched by another spoonful.  
  
She blinked up at him -- that abnormally large, dark blur with a shag of hair, the heat rolling off him. Her vision blurred, warmth spilling over her cheeks.  
  
And faking his own death made all the sense in the world.  
  
"Do you want some?"  
  
Not, "Where have you been hiding?" Not, "Did you know I've come back to this spot for two months in a row?" Not, "I've lied to them all to keep you safe." Not, "How does one live with a ghost?" Because surely, some part of the past was dead, but where they went from here was less certain than whether a pint of mint chip would endure twice the sadness of not knowing what the future held.  
  
That question hung between them, unrelenting in its simplicity and echoing as only a whisper could: in the vast chasms between two hearts.  
  
And Ben answered, easing into the seat beside her to drape an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to press his mouth to her temple, warm and solid and _there_.  
  
" _Please_."  



End file.
